


Sufficient Strain

by Leamas



Category: A Perfect Spy - John le Carré
Genre: Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 11:47:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11058306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leamas/pseuds/Leamas
Summary: Axel was brought to the interrogation cell where the agents were waiting for him, asked to be let in and confirmed that he did, in fact, have authorisation to be here.To his surprise it was not two captured British agents who sat before him, but one American intelligence officer who Axel recognised as Grant Lederer III, the subject of many reports and complaints that were passed along to him by his best agent, and his best agent, Magnus Pym.





	Sufficient Strain

Limping through the long corridors of the prison, Axel considered the story his intelligence officers outlined the situation to him. He was about half Axel’s age; he had been responsible for this situation for months now, and despite how reserved he was when he spoke Axel could tell he was excited.

One of their analysists had been under suspicion of being a British spy for many weeks now; observations yielded nothing, or any hints that something was happening. Two days earlier, however, the surveillance teams tasked with watching the middle-aged analyst observed his wife going to a different town and meeting with her handler. He was arrested that; she ordered to make contact again, and everyone involved was arrested.

“They are all still in custody?”

“Yes.”

“What’s happened to the wife?”

“She has been interrogated,” his intelligence officer said. He paused. “She signed a confession. Do you wish to speak to her?”

“I’m more interested in the spies that were brought back.”

He nodded. “Certainly. They are yours to interrogate.”

So far, neither had had anything to say but they had been softened up. Considering the severity of the documents that were being passed along, the task had been put directly to Axel.

He was brought to the interrogation cell where the agents were waiting for him, asked to be let in and confirmed that he did, in fact, have authorisation to be here. He said, “I know it must be strange seeing me on this side of the prison doors, but you must remember who I am.” The guard standing at the door, who Axel recognised, seemed shocked by the comment, as though he hadn’t considered that he’d seen Axel before; it had been years, after all.

To his surprise it was not two captured British agents who sat before him, but one American intelligence officer who Axel recognised as Grant Lederer III, the subject of many reports and complaints that were passed along to him by his best agent, and his best agent, Magnus Pym.

 

Grant and Pym had been marched at gunpoint into the back of a car, where they’d both been tied up and blindfolded and left to fend for themselves on the six-hour journey, tense in anticipation of every hard turn and bumps in the road that they knew were coming but couldn’t predict. For the whole journey, he had felt Pym’s shoulder brush against his, and heard the occasional sound of laughter or swearing from the front of the car. Other than that there had only been the bumps in the road and his own discomfort to keep him company. His and Pym’s reception in prison had been about what he’d expected, as told by some of the defectors he’d interviewed upon their escape: some punches, some kicks to the rib, his head slammed down on the floor. At least he had some idea of what to expect.

The first surprise came in the form of the tall, thin man who stepped into the interrogation room. His hair was blacker than Grant’s, and his eyes were darker; looking at his long neck and how he held a walking stick with one of his slender hands, Grant supposed that a particularly strong breeze could blow him over.

The image did little to comfort Grant, who saw a confidence in the man that meant only bad things were coming. He crossed and sat at across from them. Delicately, he leaned his cane against the table, before folding his hands in front of him.

He sat very still for a time, studying Pym with barely a change in his expression; Grant took the moment to study him, and how little his expression changed. From the corner of his eye Grant could see Pym glare at this man; if Pym’s hands weren’t chained to the chair, he would probably have wiped the blood dribbling down his nose. As it were, he simply glared. The look they exchanged was a long one that Grant could not understood, but recognised as being exclusive.

The first movement his interrogator made was to look away from Pym, over to Grant.

Being under his gaze was alarming for precisely the same reason it was alarming when he and Pym locked eyes with each other. There wasn’t a part of Grant that wasn’t being seen.

“Why did it take both of you to come for the batty wife of one of our analysts?” he asked.

Neither Grant nor Pym spoke. The man sighed.

“I’m simply curious. It was clever of them, for her to act as a courier. I was impressed, when I was told how he got away with it for so long despite being under near-constant surveillance. It was truly an embarrassment on our part.” He looked from Grant to Pym and then back to Grant. “Why did you both come for her?”

When neither of them spoke, their interrogator nodded, as though he had been given the answer he wanted. He looked between the two of them, stood, and then banged on the door to the cell. A moment later it opened, and audibly enough that Grant and Pym both could hear him, said, “I will see the younger one first.”

“What about the other?”

“Lock him up,” their interrogator said. “Don’t touch him, yet. I’ll see him before you do.”

He glanced over his shoulder and watched as Pym’s hands were unchained and he was dragged to his feet; Grant chose a spot on the wall to look at instead of watching how Pym was dragged from the room.

With Pym gone and the door closed again, his interrogator limped across the room to stand in front of Grant. When he didn’t look his interrogator grabbed him by the chin and forced him to look up. His long fingers dug painfully into his jaw, and when Grant tried to pull away he only buried them deeper.

This close, his dark eyes looked even colder than before, like catching his reflection in a two-way. Grant’s head was yanked forward, so his cheek was closer to the man’s thigh and he was forced to strain up even further before he could get a good look at the man. He didn’t want to look away but he didn’t want to be watched, either, and so he thought of Pym and glared with what he knew was only half of the force he had.

Grant watched his interrogator raise an eyebrow. He loosened his hold on Grant’s face and quickly Grant pulled away.

“There’s no point dragging this on for longer than it has to be,” his interrogator said. “We may as well skip the introductions. You will answer my questions, or I will hurt you.”

The only real option available here was to stay quiet and get hurt, which Grant could do; it would take a lot more than threats to scare him. He still felt the indents on his face where he’d just been held, and tried to smooth it over with a twitch of his jaw, like beating out a dent in the car or smoothing a bottle that has been squeezed too tight.

The backhanded slap to the face was shocking. It came too quickly for Grant to block, even if he could have moved his hands. Grant glared again. His interrogator sighed, grabbed Grant with a fistful of his hair and hit his head off the table.

When Grant recovered from the shock his interrogator was standing behind him. Grant sat up and twisted his body around to look at him, only for the man to take him by a fistful of his hair again and force his head around to the front. Grant waited for the blow, but it didn’t come.

“There is _nothing_ that you gain from staying silent,” he said. “You are here and you will not be leaving; the best option you have is to talk. You seem intelligent; surely you understand what will happen to you?”

Grant knew damn well what would happen to him – the same thing that was happening to Pym’s agents right now, assuming they hadn’t been taken out back and shot already. He’d be tortured until he signed whatever confession they wanted from him, or until he was killed, or traded back for a few of _their_ intelligence officers.

His head was jerked back. Grant spat at his interrogator, on instinct. It got him another slap but that was good – it was what Grant wanted. There was no point dragging this out. The more he looked at that man the angrier he felt himself get, like a hot wall advancing upwards within his body towards this assailing force.

“Why did you bring two intelligence officers for the wife of one of your agents?” his interrogator asked; he let go of Grant’s hair to wipe his spit from the bottom of his chin. As Grant shook himself loose his interrogator walked away, out of Grant’s reach so all that Grant could do was glare at him.

“How big is your network? How many agents did you intend to extract?”

This time when Grant didn’t answer, the bottom of the man’s cane poked his side once as encouragement. Then the end of the cane slammed against his ribs; looks were deceiving in this case, as Grant knew they could be. The man looked light enough that Grant thought Becky could knock him over, but his arms possessed a strength Grant was unfamiliar with being on the receiving end of. It knocked into his ribs with too strong a force and he felt the force of being winded, only it was focused on one single place on his body. The next blow hit him across the stomach, and when he instinctively curled forward like some makeshift means of protection, another crack landed on the top of his back, hitting Grant’s head against the table again. His interrogator grabbed Grant by the hair, pulling his head up before once again slamming it against the table.

 

After Lederer was taken away, Axel sat in the interrogation room and stared at the door across from him. Thanks to Magnus, Axel had a decent profile of what Lederer was like as a man; it was a shame, he thought, that Pym did not have access to Lederer’s psychological profile because Axel would have loved to see how he was described in clinical terms.

It might be a challenge to make him talk, Axel thought, but men like Grant were a certain way; they were hateful and petty, and whether or not they could tolerate pain on a physical level, their egos had no time for it. It would simply be a matter of wearing him down and hurting him until Grant left no choice for himself except to spit venom at Axel, in the way of secrets he ought to have kept.

Axel stood up. He would continue with Lederer tomorrow, he decided; for now he would give Lederer and Pym a chance to recuperate and compare anxieties. He would leave them to it, and allow them to instil in each other the sense of dread that Axel would have otherwise had to order a few of his men to do. In the morning he would pay Pym a visit, so as not to neglect him.

 

In their cells their hands were left unchained, mercifully. Grant raised a hand to rub his face, dragging his fingers across his scalp before taking a seat on the hard bed next to Pym. The cell they were in was cold and damp; he felt a wetness under his skin, encircling his bones, and thought somehow it made the interrogation room feel hospitable by comparison.

“Show me how bad it is,” Pym said. Grant turned to face him, raising his chin to reveal the split lip and the swelling on his cheek and under his eye. Pym gently touched Grant’s jaw and moved it to the side, and Grant thought of how he’d been grabbed, his head forced from side to side.

“I should have tried to bite him,” Grant said. “They might have had my hands tied up, but I still have my teeth.”

“How could you have done it?”

“He was close to my mouth enough,” Grant said. “What do you say, Pym? How’s _that_ for a plan of attack?” Pym shook his head, and Grant didn’t know what he was trying to prove or to who. How was it that he could be so shaken up already, when he knew that this was only the beginning of it? It wasn’t even the dread that came with understanding fully why this situation was so awful, either; he was physically shaking. Grant had a pretty fair pain tolerance; there was no excuse for it.

_It’s because Pym is here_ , he thought. He pulled out of Pym’s touch.

“There’s nothing you can do about it,” Grant said. “You should try to get some sleep first, while you can.”

“There’s only one bed, Grant,” Pym said. “We’ll take it in shifts. If you want, you should sleep first. You _are_ more injured than me, after all.”

“Don’t give me that, Pym. We’ll both be messed up by the time we’re done here. You won’t be looking too pretty after tomorrow, either.”

“But I think I _am_ a bit prettier now. You should rest – you’ll need what strength you can have when they come for you again.” There was something so sincere in Pym’s eyes that made Grant feel ashamed: ashamed at being caught, and ashamed at having been hurt without anything to gain for it.

He withdrew further from Pym. “You better not think you’re going to do anything heroic, here.”

“I won’t,” Pym promised. “I want to get out, too, you know.” He said it and then fell silent, whatever his original intention lost on his lips as a strangely vacant stare overcame him; they both knew the odds that either of them would get out alive were slim, which made everything else Pym might have said irrelevant. Grant was glad he kept his mouth shut, in that case; he was angry at Pym for it, too, and for how he seemed content to vanish into himself for the time being.

“You should sleep on the bed,” Pym finally said. “I’ll take the floor.” Reluctantly, Grant agreed.

 

The first sensation to greet Pym upon waking was the cold, which crept through his stiff shoulders. He was curled up tightly to try to conserve warmth, but it did nothing. All of his body stung and ached, and for a brief but blissful moment Pym did not realise what happened. But it was only a brief moment, though, before he heard again what it was that awoke him. Several footsteps fell on the floor around him – three sets, from the sounds of it; one set of footsteps came with a limp.

A boot buried itself in his side, and Pym curled up more tightly. He groaned, letting out a long, awful sound. There was nothing he could do about that, he realised; he would have to suffer through it if he wanted anything to come from this.

“What are you doing on the floor?” Poppy barked at him. “What are you, dogs?” Another kick; Pym knew it couldn’t possibly be from Poppy because he simply didn’t have the strength in his legs to balance or support himself like that. When he peaked over his shoulders at his assailants, his suspicions were confirmed, and his curiosity was rewarded with a pair of hands grabbing him by the front of his shirt and hauling him up. He tried to get his feet under him and to stand, but he was forced onto his knees.

“Don’t you move,” Poppy ordered, and Pym was about to protest on principal when he saw that Poppy was addressing Grant, who sat up now and glared at Poppy. He only looked rested his eyes on Grant for a moment before he was looking at Pym again – but it was not Poppy who looked at him. Instead it was Axel, with his dark eyes and the contempt he felt for so much of the world.

“Yesterday I explained to your friend how things will be done here,” Axel said. “He did not seem interested in what I had to say, but perhaps you will be. You will answer any question I have to the best of your ability, and in return you will not be hurt. If you refuse, you will be.”

He stood over Pym now and from his knees seemed even taller. In his eyes Pym saw a calculated heat, so different from the warm indifference Pym had come to expect when Axel had enough and was no longer interested in what Pym or anyone had to say. The entirety of Axel’s indifference and contempt was narrowed down to a single focus, and its full intensity shining down on Pym.

“Do you understand?” Axel demanded.

“I have nothing to tell you,” Pym said. Axel scoffed, and with a flippancy that only he could have in such a situation ordered one of his men to hit him. The hit came to Pym’s back, knocking him forward at Axel’s feet; Axel backed away, and turned to Grant.

“You get up,” he said. “Stand by the door. Move, now, or we shall move you.”

When Grant got to his feet and walked that short distance, one of the men who accompanied Axel took him by the arm; Axel waved them away, but indicated that the other man should stay with him. Axel knelt in front of Pym and grabbed a fistful of hair, turning his head up to look at him. He waited until the door closed to speak.

“I believe you have the _wrong idea_ of what is happening here,” Axel said. “You have a lot to tell me, and I expect to hear all of it, in good time. If you are very lucky, your friend will talk and satisfy me and I will not need as much from you. But I will need you – I’m sure you understand why.”

Because they were Pym’s agents; because Grant was only here to help; because Pym was Axel’s agent.

Axel tilted his head forward slightly and Pym searched for a flash of Poppy. There was nothing except the same hard intensity; the same expectation that Axel put on the rest of the world.

 

At some point while Grant was chained to the floor and being beaten the door opened and Axel walked in, although Grant was unaware of this; his attention could reach no further than that he was being hurt. He was distracted, with three men working him over like a piece of meat needing to be tenderised, making it impossible to predict where the next hit would come from. He could not anticipate the pain, nor could he defend himself from it. The only thing that Grant Lederer could do was to feel how his body responded to it, grunting and wheezing and doing what he could do twist away from it. As exposed as he was, it was very little. The hard concrete under his back made knots in his shoulders and the muscles on his back. The chains on his wrists chafed horribly from all the pulling he did against them.

He only noticed this when the beatings paused, momentarily. His wrists burned and there was no part of him that didn’t ache. When Grant opened his eyes and saw the light above him he thought for a horrible moment that he would be compelled to throw up. When he closed his eye he got a kick in the side that released a low groan.

“Wake up!” his interrogator barked at him. “I didn’t bring you here so you could sleep!”

Grant cracked an eye open and grimaced. He tried to hold himself as still as possible, despite how his whole body quivered from the stress and the anticipation of more beatings, not to mention how badly he ached. He made a fist with his hand and released it; the chains on his wrist were so tight that even just that pushed his tendons painfully against the metal, making him hurt more.

“Tell me how you came here,” his interrogator demanded. “Tell me who belongs to this network.”

Grant hated that man. He hated him because he knew that they wouldn’t stop beating him; hated him because he was the face of the reason he was being hurt, and Grant hated him for the knowledge that he came out here to help Pym protect his network and was suffering for it. Right then Grant didn’t care about what happened to Pym’s network, and bitterly he knew that he didn’t need to – they were someone else’s problem; definitely not his. He didn’t need to do his part to protect them, and he didn’t need to think of the voyeuristic responsibility he felt for them on account of the information they provided, being an analyst who observed only from a distance. The risks they took to give him the information he worked with were reason enough why he ought to keep his mouth shut, but he didn’t need it. He hated this man enough to make up for where his decency and loyalty was lacking, but right then he couldn’t even hate himself for what a terrible excuse for a human being that made him. He felt justified. When he looked at those burning eyes and the cruelty compacted into that rail-thin body body, Grant couldn’t think of anything more righteous than detesting this man.

“Go to hell,” he snapped, with what breath remained in his lungs after his ribs had been broken and his chest was stomped on. It was stomped on again, and this time Grant screamed.

 

Axel sat Pym in a chair and offered him a cigarette. When Pym did not response Axel took his response to be a no, and simply lit one for himself. His lighter was passed off to one of his guards, who also lit a cigarette. After sucking in his first puff, Axel let out a long, slow breath of smoke in Pym’s face; his eyes watered, but other than blinking he did precious little in response. If they were alone, Axel would have given him a nod of approval. Instead he ordered Pym to hold out his arm.

When Pym did not Axel sighed, pulled the cigarette from his mouth and stubbed it against Pym’s face. He reacted, as people did when they were hurt unexpectedly, and grabbed Axel’s arm. He did not get any further than that before one of the guards who stood in the room with Pym and one of their highest ranking Czech officers grabbed Pym, in Axel’s defence. His arms were wrestled behind his back with a particular roughness Axel didn’t think would be present if they knew that this was Axel’s best agent. It was why no one apart from Axel’s direct superiors were told that he had Pym here with him, in what was a very difficult to navigate situation.

The problem, Axel had explained that morning, on his way over to pay his prisoners a visit, was that if he treated Pym any better than how he treated Lederer, suspicion would immediately fall to Pym. As Axel’s best agent, that simply wouldn’t do. The only acceptable outcome here was to try to trade Pym for some of their own captured intelligence officers, but to do so convincingly; they couldn’t appear to be too eager to be rid of such a high-level British diplomat and his pet American lawyer.

They would probably have to get rid of Lederer as well, but Axel remained confident that he could make Lederer talk first; and if he could not – if Lederer proved to be a more worthy adversary, made of spine and spite – then it wouldn’t matter, because Pym would supply any information to Axel, anyway.

The second problem that Axel outlined was that he could not let Pym know what this plan was. While he suspected that Magnus might have suspicions about the true direction of their working relationship, it was never acknowledged openly that Axel was running him as an agent in an official capacity, and not simply as a casual favour between friends.

“Which means I will have to hurt him,” Axel had explained.

“But will he trust you afterwards?” he was asked.

Axel nodded. “If I hurt him myself, personally, then I believe he will actually be quite flattered. He will see himself as strong and able to endure whatever I give him, if he thinks that I am forced to do it.”

“You’re sure about this?” his superior asked, a worried expression on his face. “He is your best agent – he is an asset that right now we cannot afford to lose.”

“I have never been more sure of anything when it comes to him,” Axel said. “If he thinks he is doing it to me as a favour, to protect me from exposing my alleged betrayal to you – why, he would do anything! He could be the strongest man in the world!”

Axel had been aware that as he spoke he was being watched with an almost pitying glance. It was the look reserved for controllers who loved their agents in the way that was most efficient to run them, which was always far too much; he would know, because he often caught himself looking at Magnus in much the same way.

Now he looked at Pym, held down by two of his colleagues and forced into the chair. The burn on his aristocratic cheekbone was beginning to blister. He glared at Axel with anger that only comes after pain, and he looked so convincing that Axel knew it must be excruciating.

“Will you hold out your arm now?” Axel demanded of Pym. “No? Then will you tell me about your network, then? What did you plan to do out here?”

Pym’s voice, when he spoke, was very low. “I will not tell you anything.”

“Hold out his hand,” Axel said, speaking over Pym’s head at his colleagues. He waited until Pym’s hand was forced out in front of him, with the wrist facing upwards. He lit another cigarette and noted the slight tightening around Pym’s brow, and the frown he now wore as he glared at Axel.

What Pym did not see the knife that was being procured behind him. It was turned over once, and then handed to Axel, handle first. Pym only noticed it at the last minute, and did not have enough time to respond to the newly introduced threat before Axel slashed Pym’s forearm with a knife. He waited until the blood began pooling in the wound before making the next laceration, this one sitting further up on Pym’s arm, near his elbow. After that he didn’t wait; Axel did not cut indiscriminately, for his patience forced him to control every movement his own body made, but he was not as careful as he could have been.

“Hold his arms back,” Axel ordered, and when his order was followed without question he made a long cut across Pym’s chest. It would leave a scar, especially if he was not released in time to get proper help before the infection set in, but truly, Axel could not see that entirely as a bad thing. One day he would need to explain to Magnus, perhaps as he touched it, that it was heroic; _you got it saving me, didn’t you? This is the scar Sir Magnus received while he was protecting Poppy_.

Pym hissed and glared up at him.

Axel touched the knife to Pym’s throat.  He asked, “You still don’t want to talk?”

“I have nothing to say to you,” Pym said. His voice sounded very small, like a martyr sooner willing to die than give his torturers the satisfaction of changing him irrevocably.

“Fine,” Axel said. Rather than cut Pym’s throat he cut his cheek. He didn’t speak to Magnus again as he said, “String him up and wash out his wounds with saltwater. If he dies of infection I will want to blame someone, so at least try to do a good job.”

After Pym was marched away – not dragged, for even after suffering blood loss that should make anyone woozy, he continued to _walk_ , -- Axel could only look at the chair where his friend had sat. He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. He kept the knife; it would make a good souvenir for his agent after this was all over, when he was wanting something to remember the experience by.

 

When Pym saw Grant again it was when he was returned to his cell. The pain made him queasy, and it hadn’t been helped by having saltwater poured over what were, truly, terrible wounds. Nothing had been done to stop the bleeding. Many still bled.

Like Pym, water also dripped off Grant. He was also shirtless, and lay on what was referred to as a bed with his arms wrapped around himself. It concerned Pym that he couldn’t even see Grant shiver. He knelt down on the floor in front of Grant, and realised that Grant was staring through Pym, at the wall behind him.

_That’s how he does it_ , Pym realised; _That’s how he’s chosen to live with this_.

He joined Grant on the bed and took him by the arm, pulling him closer. His skin was cold, even colder than Pym; being too close to him would likely drain him of what little warmth he still had left, but Pym found himself less worried about that than he thought he ought to be. He wrapped an arm around Grant and manoeuvred them so they sat side by side, with their legs touching and Grant’s shoulder touching his chest. He tried not to bleed on him, because he didn’t want to have to see his own blood on Grant’s body.

Grant offered very little resistance.

“We will be out of here soon,” Pym said softly into Grant’s hair. He imagined Bee doing this for Grant, eventually, and took note of how docile Grant was right now; he thought of Mary, and knew that he would have to submit to the same careful embraces. He would welcome it. A rush of affection ran through him, and he tried to keep his thoughts only to her, and to Tom; it was easier to think about than Poppy, and how once he had done this for Axel.

Eventually, after Pym aggressively rubbed at Grant’s bare shoulder for what felt like hours, Pym finally felt him begin to shiver. Not long after that, he pushed himself away from him and buried the heels of his palm into his eyes, shaking.

“F-fuck,” Grant said. “You’re fucking face, Magnus. They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” Pym said solemnly. “Most likely.”

He tried not to think about what Axel had told him the first morning he woke up here, when he’d crouched over him and tangled a hand through his hair. One way or another, this was _necessary_ ; neither had brought up the possibility that such a thing would ever happen in any seriousness, but he could remember the sobriety in Axel’s eyes when he said, “One day perhaps _you_ will understand what it is to suffer at the hands of the Czechs.” Then he had lightened in tone and atmosphere and said that he would welcome that day, whenever it came; that perhaps it would teach Magnus something that his English upbringing deprived him of. Magnus would have done anything to know where Axel was coming from.

“I can’t die here,” Grant said. “Fuck, m-Magnus, I have to get back.”

“Stop it,” Pym said. He leaned closer to Grant so they were touching, and when Grant tried to pull away he grabbed his friend by the shoulder and turned him to face him. The panic was evident on Grant’s face, like a child who was unsure where he was and wanted only to leave. He was shaking under Pym’s hand, and Pym could think of nothing he could do to stop him.

When he tried to move again, Pym shook him. His own shoulders ached from being chained over his head while the wounds left by Axel had been doused in salt water, and he didn’t know what had been done to Grant; nonetheless, he continued to shake him until he knew that Grant was looking at him.

“You can’t talk like this,” Pym said. “Either we will die here or we won’t, but what good are you to anyone if you freak out?”

“How will we get out of here?” Grant asked.

“Think about who you are,” Pym said. “Just think, Grant. And calm down. Do you think the Agency would lose you, and risk the wrath of some people who could really have a hand stirring up trouble?”

Grant looked away, and ran his hands over his face and covered his eyes. He leaned forward over the bed, still shaking, and groaned. Pym didn’t miss how rough and unsteady his movements were.

“And come closer,” Pym said. “You have to stay warm.”

“Good luck, brother. We’re in Czecho now, don’t you know?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Pym snapped. “You’re being difficult. What do you think you’re going to get from this?”

Grant looked over to him, and for a moment Pym saw Grant hate him. He hardened his expression for only a moment, giving Grant the glare he wanted to return, then softened it. He edged closer to his friend until they were side-by-side.

“I suppose it’s good that you were frozen,” Pym said. “It must help with the swelling, I think.” He ran the backs of his knuckles down one of Grant’s arms, where he’d been kicked especially hard. There was a dark bruise that was deeper than the rest of the purple that covered his body. Grant shuddered, but didn’t back away this time.

“Always look on the bright side, right Pym?”

“It’s Pym now!”

Grant dropped his head again. “Fuck this, Magnus. Just fuck this.”

“They’re going to trade for you, Grant,” Pym said. “For both of us, I should think.”

Grant nodded. He still didn’t look at Magnus. With the cold creeping into Magnus he was tempted to just let Grant freeze, or give up.

When Grant finally spoke, it was only to say, “Well they wouldn’t take me back and leave you here, would they?”

 

Axel sat on the table in front of Grant Lederer, like he had done when he first came in to see them. After two weeks Grant looked thinner, and it showed in his face. What of him Axel could see was a mottled mess of bruises in various staging of healing, the process constantly being interrupted by more beatings. He looked weak, sitting in front of Axel; his hands shook, harder than the rest of him. Axel wondered if it wouldn’t be kinder to tie him to the chair to ensure that he didn’t simply fall off.

“Magnus still doesn’t know that you’ve talked,” Axel said. He leaned closer. Grant wasn’t even looking at him. “Will you tell him?”

Grant shook his head once, then again.

“I didn’t think so,” Axel said. “So far you’ve not said anything _bad_ , or too incriminating – he would understand, no?”

A flicker of something on Grant’s face.

“You thought you would die,” Axel carried on.

He’d been clever enough not to hold the gun to Grant’s head; the slow-building terror as Grant’s cold body began to grow weaker was far more efficient, he thought, than the blinding moment of panic inspired by a gun to Grant’s head: the promise of a _certain_ death.

“He wouldn’t blame you,” Axel said.

Grant was still not looking at him, although he’d since stopped staring into a single space in the difference. What did he imagine, Axel wondered? What was he looking for as his salvation? His entire body was ruined, and shaking. There were probably at least a few broken bones, in his ribs and possibly on his face, if his recent way of holding his jaw meant anything. Shirtless, he was cold as well. That was probably the only part of what Axel had done that made him uncomfortable to look at, for it also made him cold to see on someone so young.

“You thought you were saving yourself,” Axel told Grant. “Would he have done differently?”

A moment of deliberate consideration on Grant’s face, as though he were truly pondering the question for. He didn’t answer; Axel thought it looked as though he had no intention of doing so, but by the look he wore – how his jaw was set, as much as it could be on account of the swelling; how his eyes lowered but no longer seemed to study the distant places on the through his hands – Axel knew that he’d made his mind up.

“Shall I tell him?”

The speed with which Grant looked up at Axel was so sudden that it was alarming. His eyes were wide, and he stared at the Czech man as though he’d come back from the dead with news of Grant’s own execution, and news of what his fate would be afterwards.

“You said you wouldn’t,” Grant said, his words small.

“And you have not yet given me enough information to make carrying your secret worth it,” Axel said. “I am giving you a choice. You can either tell me everything I want to know, and I will hurt you no more and I will not tell Magnus Pym that you told me his name, your name, and everything else you will tell me today, in exchange for some warmth and some sleep and some food, and your life. I will take that secret with me to the grave, Grant.”

He did not miss how Grant prickled at the sound of his own name, as though he’d been hit.

“In exchange, all I ask is that you provide me with something useful,” Axel said. “What do you think, Grant?”

By Grant’s expression when he looked up, Axel knew he understood that he had lost.

 

Eventually Magnus Pym and Grant Lederer III were escorted out of prison at gunpoint, and then delivered out of Czechoslovakia with the same formality. The wounds on Pym’s arms were bandaged, and the burn on his face had been cleaned and tended to. It could stand to be better looked after. Both men walked roughly, although Pym more so than Grant; a particularly nasty kick in his left knee resulted in a pulled ligament. Under the new clothes both men had been gifted with that morning were an assortment of bruises and injuries; lacerations and grazes. They couldn’t be seen from a distance. The grazes on Pym’s back were worse than the cuts on Grant’s; the raw red where Grant’s wrists were chained was worse than the cuts covering Pym, for he had not seen medical attention as quickly as he should have.


End file.
